A database may be considered an amalgamation of data that is arranged for ease and speed of search and retrieval. Each database may have one or more large structured sets of persistent data. They are usually associated with a program to enter, update, and query the data. An example of a simple database is a single file containing many records, each of which contains the same set of fields with each field being a certain fixed maximum width.
Databases are used by businesses, individuals, educational institutions, etc. to store data for subsequent accessing. Databases are often arranged and organized into fields so that accessing the data located therein is facilitated with respect to both searching and retrieval. However, prior to searching or retrieval, the data contained in a given database is previously stored in the database. Unfortunately, entering data into a database can require substantial infrastructure and is often time consuming.
For example, if one or a few people are responsible for entering data that is related to numerous individuals, the time consumed by physically entering the data by the few people can be enormous. Moreover, additional time is required because the one or few people first manually acquire the data from the numerous individuals. If, on the other hand, the numerous individuals are permitted to directly enter their own data into the database, wide-open access to the database is consequently granted to many people, which can require significant infrastructure.
Accordingly, there is a need for general schemes and/or techniques that can facilitate the acquisition of data from numerous individuals and/or the entering of such data into a database without requiring extensive infrastructure and/or without extensive manual entry by one or a few people who do have access to the database.